Well, if this all goes through then it looks like VPNs will boom. I have been looking at a few to gauge level of privacy and securty. And sadly, I would trust a VPN over my ISP offering a "privacy fee"

An ISP might notice that a particular tablet often visits children’s websites. From that, “they can infer that this tablet then belongs to a child,” and deliver advertising targeted to kids.

I would imagine that they would still need to comply with COPPA, in which case tracking/targeting children under 13 is all kinds of illegal. Although I dont doubt that they are lobbying hard to get that axed too.

> For example, the ISP knows when you visit https://arstechnica.com, but it doesn't see which articles you're reading.

When using HTTPS, the ISP will see only the IP address visited; the domain name will be encrypted inside the HTTP headers. For sites with static IP addresses, this would lead to a one-to-one mapping. For sites hosted through CDNs and proxies such as CloudFlare and for sites on shared hosting, it would be harder to tell.

When using HTTPS, at best, the ISP can use correlation with your DNS lookups to determine a probability that you've visited a certain site. I wonder if this is an opportunity for another misdirection type of tool, perhaps akin to TrackMeNot? (Whether this would be effective is up for debate.)

I think there could now be a good market for routers that are sold paired with VPN service. The fact is the vast majority of users will never enable VPN on their router, if their router even supports it. This needs to change and hardware that includes service could be a way.

I think it should be mentioned that Tor has a couple of other downsides:

1) It can be really, really, painfully slow. VPN's, if you're with a good provider, will likely be a lot faster, but with a bit lower level of privacy, *and* you typically pay for a VPN, while Tor is free.

2) It can be good that your connection can appear to come from anywhere in the world with Tor, but you also have little control over where your connections appear to come from. This means that you might be expecting, say, the US version of a site and are suddenly presented with the German or Russian version. VPN's, on the other hand, sometimes give you an option of what country your endpoint is in (which can be useful if, say, you are trying to access regionally-restricted content, or just to improve latency and bandwidth).

I would like to know this as well. Mr. Brodkin can you look into this? I'm not finding any explanation (it might not be viable to filibuster since its just the use of that GOP get of jail free card legislation they passed previously....but I would like some confirmation of that. What's up here?

Sneaky they snuck it through the Senate 1st (where it'd be easier to quash it with public opinion) amongst the Health Care and Supreme Court drama.

There is no point in calling any Republican representative - unless you are planning on telling them you are going to make sure they don't get another term by voting for anyone else and donating to anyone but them.

The Senate vote invoked the Congressional Review Act, which lets Congress eliminate regulations it doesn't like and prevent the agency from issuing similar regulations in the future. For ISPs, this is better than the FCC undoing its own rules, because it means a future FCC won't be able to reinstate them.

Ok, let's stop pointing fingers at who did what, this will do us no good. We know it's going to get passed, and we know the consequences. So, how about a list of how to fight back? We geek are a disorganized bunch, but perhaps with the guidance of Ars, we could form some kind of group that could fight back (yeah, I know about donating to the EFF) or encourage all Ars users to get a VPN, or something.

Hell, ARS is always pushing "DealMaster" deals for cheapo laptops, perhaps it's time to push for something better, a lifetime subscription to ArsVPN or something.

Start putting up *step* *by* *step* instructions on how to set up a Streisand or run our own Tor nodes, anything to sow civil disobedience.

Talk about ironic, in order to register and be able to post on this site I actually had to turn off my VPN.-Fuck that! And that was going to be the thrust of my post, I can't use VPN on Amazon prime video or on Netflix. I have to keep turning it off and on again which is a total pain. And if I have it on when shopping on Amazon they still know who I am and I still get advertising from them. So what is a poor boy to do?

It would be nice if the VPN list was updated to weed out the VPNs (every one on that old list) that reduces your speed to dial up speeds.

We really need a list that doesn't do that ...

First possibility: Run you own! Servers are cheap and setting up a VPN is easy. My server has 500Gb of traffic/mo and works great. (Especially since you can't use Netflix with it, Price is about $20/year) Maybe Ars could make a guide for doing something like that?

Second possibility: Don't go for the cheapest carrier! I never had that problem unless I tried free services. I still have a VPN subscription with a Swedish carrier (that doesn't log) and it works great. There are some "slow downs" in the evenings but you can get 1MB/s any time.

A big reminder, if you go the VPN/Tor route, remember that most of your video content will not work. Netflix is a high profile example that even blocks VPS, but you can be certain that most networks/Hulu etc will block all VPNs.

There is another way to protect our personal data. Do not use social media sites, or the related, to log into other sites. Sites that want you to log in with facebook or with google or whatever, they are linking your accounts to your activity. I've seen a rise in that method where they entice consumers with popularity (among their own social clique) for the exchange of your data. Be mindful.

And that's only on the advertising side of things. I'm sure your insurance company will be interested in your browsing history as it correlates to safe/dangerous conduct. Employers may be interested in your history as a way of doing an extended background check. Credit monitoring companies might be interested in expanding their profiles.

ISPs are not like Google, Facebook, and Apple in regards to access to personal information. I have no choice of any other broadband provider. ISPs can view ALL the traffic from my household, including that of my children. There is no reasonable method to protect my family. I am also paying my ISP outrageous sums of money for service and receive poor customer service and poor quality of service. My family and I should not be exploited by them further.

Protect the constituents in your district from further abuse by the monopoly ISPs you have allowed to operate.

Does WOW! sell information to the presented advertisers?No. Your personal information is completely safe and at no time does an advertiser even know which customers receive their ads online. Our location-based advertising program is based on a double-blind system which means that neither the advertiser nor the ad network which sells the ads ever has access to your personal information.

Also

Quote:

How is this different from behavioral online advertising?

Unlike behavioral advertising, location-based ads have nothing to do with your Web surfing history. If you see a location-based ad, it’s only because that advertiser has selected your zip code as an area they want to target.

Looks like I don't have to opt-out, even. I'm just fine with local mom-and-pop businesses being able to tell an ad network to only serve ads to people in my zip code (another Q/A on WOW's website).

EDIT: Not to say I won't be calling my representatives telling them as their constituent I do not approve of them voting in favor on the bill.